A PyOhio emergency

As you may have seen, I was at PyOhio this weekend, and I was t{wee,oo}ting a lot. As such, my Apple Watch was going nuts with RTs, faves, &c. I was talking to some people in a hallway and force-pressed to clear my notifications… and somehow the “Clear All” button got stuck on my watch screen.

I kept pressing it, and nothing happened. So I tried holding down the button that normally would bring up the power-off screen…

Watch: (loudly) WHOOP WHOOP

Apple Watch has a feature that I've never had occasion to try: if you hold down the function button for even longer than it takes to get the power-off screen, it will go into emergency mode and eventually call the local emergency dispatch service.

I'm now in full panic mode. I pull out my phone and try to determine whether it's calling 911. I can't… tell. I'm frantically searching Apple's support site to find out how to hard-power-down my watch, pronto, all while holding the watch to my ear to make sure that if a voice starts coming out of it asking what my emergency is, I'm ready to explain and apologize profusely.

Finally, I find the article. “Hold both buttons down till you see the Apple logo,” it says. I did this, and finally, finally, the watch definitively powers down and I reboot it.

As far as I can tell, emergency dispatchers were never summoned, and nobody at the conference got in trouble, particularly yours truly. And I amused the people I was talking with, a little.